This blog was set up as a record for Materiality and Intangibility: Contested Zones, an international two-day Symposium and Live Art Event held on the 14 and 15 December 2009 at the School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester. It was planned and organised by PhD students for PhD students and was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

Monday, 14 December 2009

Technicalities...

Opps, sorry about that! There was a minor technical hitch there. The internet has decided to deny me access via my machine, so I'm using Amy's. Which is fortunately present!

Tania de Fonte, in the intervening period, showed how different configurations of documents, artefacts and evidence can be formed into a picture, presenting certain interpretations as fact and how uncertain those in fact can be.

Paul Fitzpatrick's discussion of memorialisation, surrounding the collection of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington shows once more how the locale of artefacts determines the meanings and stories that we weave around them. Through the artefacts deposited at the memorial, the memories cease to be national, and become personal and painful expressions of loss.